Most of these are probably going to have to be autonomous. It’s the only way to make this safe. They might introduce a special license allowing you to fly them manually after you take a course, but this will probably only be allowed in very sparsely inhabited areas and may be more of a tourist gimmick than anything else.

For practical everyday use you will have to have these run on automated systems that keep track of where others are at any given time and can fly along designated virtual lanes. I am not expecting these to be individually owned, at least not at first, but rather have taxi services owning an entire fleet of them and you just call them via an app.

The main problem right now is not the technology it’s how you regulate them to make them safe, and i trust that China has a good handle on that, and if i had to guess i’d say they’ll probably finish implementing the regulatory legal structure for this to become commercially viable in a couple of years, with possible setbacks if there is any kind of serious accident in the meantime.